


he keeps a web (of lies)

by noetic



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Circe - Madeline Miller
Genre: Experimental Style, F/M, M/M, Muteness, Period Typical Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22861600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noetic/pseuds/noetic
Summary: As for me, I could see myself accepting him for only his eyes and his loose, tousled black curls, but not many maidens would settle for a prince with half a face, god blood notwithstanding. He no longer had a loyal audience, only Hermes and his fleeting interest and capriciousness to keep him company, and yet there was still a myriad of stories he had not yet borne to this world. It seemed, to him, that I was a suitable placeholder.(Circe hosts a visitor.)
Relationships: Circe & Original Character(s) (Circe), Circe/Hermes (Circe), Hermes/Original Male Character(s) (Circe)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	he keeps a web (of lies)

**Author's Note:**

> An experimental piece to see whether I can emulate Miss Miller's impeccable style or not – that, and also an excuse to write a trickster god-type character into Greek lore. I don't assume I could reach the heights of Mesperyian, but it's a good practise nonetheless.

I stepped out of my house’s threshold and faced the sky. My father’s chariot had long sunk into the sea, and now what was left to me was the gentle breeze of night conveying the thin smell of brine and salt. I wondered, for a moment, if the great sea-lord Poseidon kept to his domain of water or with his equals upon the summit of Olympus – my eyes fixed to the sky and my aunt’s moon, and I could not find it in myself to imagine any trace of the sea’s magnanimity and cruelty up there. The sky is an entirely different thing, and who I was trying to summon was a similar case between sky or sea.

I walked down to shore, where the wind was stronger and could carry my message with greater capacity. With cold water lapping at my feet, I need not cup my mouth to call for him. “Come and tell me,” I whispered, and let the wind carry my voice, faint and reedy as it is. “Tell me everything.”

It was a matter of considerable debate whether the famed Keeper of Tales and companion to Hermes was truly of godly blood. His divinity came in no small part from his mother, the lady of song Calliope, who’d enticed a foreign prince of Egypt with her sweet voice and honeyed stories; but this prince’s father had parentage that blessed him with piecemeal godliness, traces of ichor running in his veins, sure and fast, traces of some god of Egypt that I did not know nor care to. Such a strange occasion bore this question: would the meeting of a goddess and demigod in passion breed a divine, or would the whelp’s blood be pure red, his life marked with a definite end? Sea or sky?

In my own belief, the result of this coupling was divine, for the moment I breathed my message to the wind, my entire body was wrought with a cold gust of unnatural air that fanned my back, chilling my spine and prickling gooseflesh all over. When I looked over my shoulder, he already stood there, tall and proud with the set of a proper god in his lean yet sculpted figure. I could not perform such a feat before my witchcraft was clear to me, not even with purer blood coursing within me. So it was that I believed him a god, and treated him as such.

“Lord of stories and son of poetry,” I said, drawing closer to him. “Aconitus. What do they say of me?”

Aconitus’ eyes were lit in the dim moon’s shine, the only part of his face not veiled by a glimmering cloth the colour of obsidian, reflective though it is only fabric. It was wrapped around his face and draped down to nearly skim the nape of his neck, also aglow. Those eyes were beautiful, I acknowledged, with a quality that reminded me of Hermes himself, if the Olympian was a touch more courtly – these were the eyes of a prince, thoughtful and sharp, curved upward like an eagle’s and painted with deep ebony kohl that only accentuated the flecked amber in his eyes. Honey, not sun, not like mine, and not black like Hermes’. I had no doubt the rest of his face was just as handsome and aquiline, for his forehead was free of lines and the way his eyes creased was with youth.

At my request, those eyes filled with something I could not initially decipher, for I did not yet know the strange ways of his emotions; but I know now that it was curiosity. Everything about him was sharp, like a weaving needle, and when I looked in those eyes then I could not unravel it save for the way it made my own eyes sting, almost like in offence. He regarded me like this for a while, then raised his hands and instead spoke with the movement of his long fingers.

I was not a fool; I knew well why he’d not deigned to raise his voice, speak with me with that instead, and why he wore that veil. It was said that every story and tale known to man was known to Aconitus, from the tale of the heir to every throne down to the whelp of every plebeian fisherman or slave – but Aconitus was well-travelled, and when there were no roads left for him to trace on earth, none left for him to hear, he turned his attention elsewhere. Underwater, in craggy caves, and atop mountains, he sought every story this time known to the gods; he was a novelty, a child born to a god and demigod, and gods loved novelties, so they accepted him in their halls and court and beguiled him with their enactments of epic proportions. Aconitus drank down each story, and told them to others in turn, weaving them into songs and lyrics he sang with his prized flute, the one his mother taught him to play. He could entice entire cities to his beckon, have them listen to his tales for days and still find breath for more once he was done. In this regard, he was not like Hermes, who himself knew Aconitus on account of his tales and knew a fair amount himself – it was said that for Aconitus’ divinity, there was a quality to him, a quality that was undoubtedly mortal, and drew other mortals to him and his stories.

Perhaps it was his voice. Perhaps, like me, he spoke with the voice of mortals, but this I couldn’t know for certain because of this: I did not know which story it was that invoked the ire of Apollo, the god of sun and lord of song himself, but it was only out of virtue afforded to Aconitus for his role as a storyteller and musician that saved him from a worse fate. Though, I rectify now, perhaps for Aconitus it was a terrible fate still to have his mouth sewn shut with the thread from Athena’s loom, crafted to be impregnable by any shear. Thus he did not speak since, not that he would try, for it would be illegible besides and he had no telepathic ability like the greater gods. Hence he was silenced, a lesser god put in his place. Almost like me.

There were only few who knew to speak the language of hands that Aconitus spoke, scattered and far-in-between, so not many would summon Aconitus to their court for his performances like they once would. But I had prepared for that, and still, it was a challenge for me to converse with him so – the motions of his fingers were elegant and graceful, but a flurry all the same, imperceptible to any who wasn’t a god. He asked me if I had not already been regaled with tales of me by Hermes. Slowly, I moved my own fingers to ask him, if he knew Hermes so well, why would he assume that it came easy to Hermes to give what is asked of him? The amusement and delighted surprise in Aconitus’ eyes that came after was honed to a razor’s edge. For one without laughter, he was mirthful.

_ You are aware I lie _ _,_ he told me. “Yes,” I said then, with my voice. “They call you god of fraud and lies, besides your stories. Corrupt kings and nobles keep to you like cutpurses keep to your companion, but I know well that each story is not without embellishment.”

_ I may tell you something of pure embellishment _ _,_ he said. It was not a warning. “Yes,” I said, drawing myself to my full height in response to this challenge, “and I would wait until you become bored of yourself and tell me something with a grain of truth.”

His eyes creased and I knew his veil hid a smile. Could he smile like that, with his lips sutured shut with immortal thread and constricting every movement, painfully so? But then I reconciled: pain was unimaginable to a god, but it was something you become accustomed to, you learn to live with, especially something so permanent. In turn, as I had heard from Hermes, his lips had been stitched shut carefully and affectionately by a number of naiads falling over each other to touch the supple and fair mouth that had once poured forth so many charms – each of them kissed him after, to clean the ichor that’d been bled. I wondered if he’d tasted like nectar or iron.

_ Then it is a long time that you would have to wait _ , he said,  _ for there is many I ache to tell and little I have to tell it to _ .

I told him he must be young and foolish still. Time meant nothing to me – and I left unsaid,  _ it will soon be so for you, too _ .

It was then that I could truly read his eyes – in them, he laughed. I couldn’t tell if it was  at me, or  with me, but the sight was strangely pleasing nonetheless.

_ It will be a pleasure then _ , he said.  _ Lead me away and I will surely tell you everything _ .

From then to innumerable days forward, almost my every hour was filled with him and his tales, told to me by skilled and practised bends and flourishes of his slender fingers, and everything that was left unsaid by his hands were portrayed like a knife in his eyes, the warm yet vibrantly enrapturing colour of molten honey. It is easy, perhaps, to guess where such a companionship may lead – but unlike with Hermes, Aconitus and I did not spare even a single moment for coupling; in the time we spent together then, I can scarcely recall moments where he touched me, even in the slightest.

In a bout of curiosity, I asked him if he knew the nature of my correspondence with Hermes.

His eyes were bright, then, for the wine he’d already drank – he’d complained about the taste, tangy and bitter as it was, not sweet like it was back in his palatial residence in Egypt, and moreover he drank an entire cup without once touching it to his mutilated lips, needing only to hold the cup to drain it. Of course he knew of me and Hermes, he boasted, he knew tantamount to everything, and besides, Hermes had little stories he wouldn’t share with his companion.  _ Therapon _ was the word Aconitus used to describe his relation to Hermes, and it meant a companion of the highest regard. If Hermes was a prince, then Aconitus would be captain of his honour guard, his attendant, the one who would come running every time Hermes scraped his knee, and also be afforded the same privilege in return. I doubted that Hermes was even capable of forming such a connection and questioned Aconitus on this – I asked what he truly felt of Hermes.

_ If it was possible to me, I would steal away the wings on his shoes and watch him drown in the sea he is drifting past _ _,_ he said.  _It would make for a splendid story_ , and did you know he cannot swim besides? I knew from that response, that by some honestly bizarre possibility, Aconitus liked Hermes well enough.

“And how do you feel Hermes thinks of you?” I next asked.

Aconitus’ eyes laughed at me.  _Not a single being in this reality can even begin to fathom what that overgrown bug thinks of anything_ , he said,  _ if he is capable of thinking at all _ .

I asked if Hermes beds with him. Aconitus’ eyes laughed again. He did not deny my accusation.

I did not know if I regretted the phrasing of my words when I first summoned Aconitus to my lonely shores.  Tell me everything, I had asked of him. Now, he lounged with me and walked close everywhere I went, bearing the stench of my bubbling dyes and the glare of my animals as his hands remained ever-animated, reenacting epic stories and tales of heroes I had never previously heard of before, some that were so obviously spurious and others that sounded like they had an inkling of truth. He told me again ones I’d heard before, such as of my uncle Boreas’ rivalry with the Olympian Apollo for the hand of a fair prince, but he spelled out to me the name of this prince that was not previously known to me: Hyacinthos. He told me the tale of a hunter with a vaunting pride and vanity that could beat out most of the gods that roamed my father’s halls, and how his fate had ended in such a way that was unfairly sweet for the pain he’d dealt to those around him: Narcissus. There was one of Apollo’s son, dogged in his errand to rescue his lover from the clutches of the underworld and for his trouble won himself the privilege of having his head hung from the Muses’ mantle to sing for an eternity: Orpheus, and his mate, whose name I could not recall and Aconitus refused to recount. 

One day, Aconitus asked:  _ would you have a story of that sea-god’s family? That blasted squid of a sea god, Glaucos? You are familiar? _

“I am,” I answered him. We were following trails about the island then, as I was on my chore to collect a number of herbs which  pharmakis potential blooms at the current hour. Aconitus was in step with me, but he seemed to glide instead of walk, float above the dirt that would otherwise mar his feet, the colour of warm light brown ale like the rest of his skin, glowing and smooth as Daedalus’ winsome stone sculptures. “But I would rather not hear anything of him. I know enough to satiate me for more than a few eternities.”

But it seemed that Aconitus’ question was merely perfunctory, a simple courtesy instead of one that he would actually heed. He went on to rattle about Glaucos’ lineage, who’d claimed a good fortune on account that they could trace their genealogy to a magnificent lord of the sea, and then of the tragedies that would beset them if they failed to meet a certain quota for their sacrifices and rituals. Aconitus finished this with an anecdote of Glaucos’ nephew who’d disappeared down a ditch after the family sacrificed a fowl instead of a sheep, and the mother that threw herself from a sea-beaten cliff soon after. I was on my knees, then, gathering up moly, and he was pressed up in leisure against a tree.

_ It is interesting what godhead does to people _ _,_ Aconitus remarked breezily.  _ Once, Lord Glaucos was a humble fisherman who might have given up everything for a moment to speak with you, his radiant lady. Yet the moment he was touched by divinity, every drop of his manhood he forsook and he becomes as capricious as any other god, and suddenly he is the landlord he once loathed . _

I watched his little oration with my basket of herbs pliant at my knee. “You act as if you yourself are not guilty of such things,” I accused. “You are more a god than Glaucos is.” I meant this in a practical manner, referring to Aconitus’ blood-by-birth, but the way Aconitus’ brow ticked up told me he processed a different comprehension.

Aconitus’ eyes creased with a smile.  _ Would you like to know what became of his old landlord? _ he asked.

“No,” I said, but he was already beginning his story. 

I thought I understood the cause of Aconitus’ relentless… chattering, inappropriate as the term may be in his unfortunate context. Once it was that Aconitus was among the rare gods who’d deign to travel among mortal roads and mingle with the lowlives, playing his flute in shepherd’s fields or the part of a bard in crowded inns so that people might draw near and heed his many tales. I could only imagine his voice, sticky and sweet like the honey of his eyes, capturing the attention of many and keeping a deathly grip so they might not slip away at the story’s denouement. He must have been popular wherever he tread, mortal and godly halls alike, handsome as he was and carelessly charming in the most princely way.

Now, all he had left was the piercing beauty of his eyes, for if his veil was pulled aside the morbid beauty of golden threads binding his lips shut was not a sight that many would be pleased to bear – imperfection was rarely accepted in a god’s halls, less so for mortals, and this was a wound meant to bear shame. As for me, I could see myself accepting him for only his eyes and his loose, tousled black curls, but not many maidens would settle for a prince with half a face, god blood notwithstanding. He no longer had a loyal audience, only Hermes and his fleeting interest and capriciousness to keep him company, and yet there was still a myriad of stories he had not yet borne to this world. It seemed, to him, that I was a suitable placeholder.

That, I could fathom; what I could not was why he seemed to bear with me for so long. Surely with Hermes as company, he could expect to be entertained with a steady stream of japes to accompany his tales and expect a story in reply. I could imagine their exchanges, looking upon the sky that both have travelled so often, and perhaps after coupling they would lay there and laugh; Aconitus with that mute upward dip of his eyes, Hermes with his voice. Hermes did so love his own voice – it was a perfect match.

With me, however, it was easy to tire of Aconitus’ stories when there was no other to listen with me. My nymphs would haunt passageways and doorways, like they always did, and if they were lucky then Aconitus would level that soul-baring look of his on them and send them away flushed red and squealing, but I knew none would come to his bed or take him to theirs and they would not dare approach him in day. If they understood his language, they gave no sign. His beauty was apparent, but it was a kind of beauty that little would behold; his face was the bewitching picture of a knife, glinting sharp and primed to strike whenever. Hermes always liked some edge – I did not wonder why they kept around each other often after coming to know Aconitus. As for myself, I found the demigod-god strange, if undeniably beguiling. If it was not for the way the torches of my hallways would set alight the planes of his face and unearth that deep, broiling misery in his eyes, perhaps I would have taken to him more.

But my curiosity still stood; why stay with me, the lone witch of Aiaia, with my thin voice and wavering attention and easily invited boredom, who was certainly unsuitable to keep a bard proper company? 

“Don’t you miss the company of Hermes?” I asked him, one night of summer. A season had already passed where I spent my hours with him tailing behind me. We were sitting by the hearth, he in the silver chair while I relegated myself to the wooden counterpart.

Aconitus smiled.  _ The moment I begin missing Hermes is the moment he is lost to me, and I to him _ .

So he understood it the way I did. This eased me a little, but it did not satiate me. “Do I not bore you?”

He lifted his hands, then, and for a moment his gestures stuttered as he attempted to coalesce a sufficient reply into sign.  _ You do not . _

“Why?” I pressed.

_ Because I do not bore myself . _

While I had beckoned him to my island to hear what was said of me, it had taken him a great deal of time to finally gift to me what is asked of him. I had anticipated this and lengthened my patience to weather this god and his tendency for unnecessary, padded small talk, voiceless as he was. Despite this, there were some rare moments when he would let slip slithers of word regarding myself, often in relation to other such stories containing other such characters. Most of them were from Hermes, and from that I could glean what I thought Hermes would say of me; I was not wrong in many accounts.

_ It is true what they say of your voice. I, myself, find it hard to imagine a hawk would sound such as you, though. _

_ You do not fuck your nymphs, I hear. Is it because of your own nymph blood that they are susceptible to slipping away from your bed? _

_ There is word of you circulated from Hermes. He calls you a bitch with a heart of stone – it’s a common jest. Many would laugh with him. _

He did not say this with malice in his eyes, but that could also be because he had been schooled in the way of manners as a prince should.

“Do you think so too?” I asked.

_ You have your moments . _

“Does it surprise you?”

Aconitus regarded me with a curious look, as if I was a stupid infant despite the generations that I have on him. Many have looked upon me in such a way before.  _ No. You would not be the first . _

“Do you laugh with them?”

_ Yes _ .

This stung a little, but I was nothing if not foolhardy. “How?”

_ The best I can . _

I do not know where Aconitus takes his rest, but he would be good as gone the moment I stood up for my own period of slumber. I would walk my hallways alone, then, without his imposing presence to haunt my steps. I always did get the unsettling sense of a pair of strange eyes watching my rest, but it never became so grating that we came to blows. I did not even know if Aconitus slept at all – my nymphs did not prepare any rooms for him, and he did not ask for any to be prepared anyway. Perhaps once I had gone, he would come back to the hearth and watch the fire until it died. He had been lonelier.

Yet some nights I still felt myself especially lonely, my wide bed cold and yearning for warmth. I did not want for Aconitus the same way I had had Daedalus, nor when Hermes first came to my bed, yet the thought was not foreign and crossed my mind often. I did not mind it, and even more, it was a novelty that Aconitus should keep his distance from me such that he did not seem promiscuous in any manner. The look in his eyes was sometimes telling, but he never moved to realise it. 

“Would you not come to my bed?” I once wondered aloud, not meaning to invite him. Aconitus poured himself wine and then touched the cup; once it was drained through his secret ways of sustenance, he looked at me.  I have not .

I told him that was not what I’d asked. His gaze took up amusement at my supposed ‘impertinence’.

_ To sleep next to you? _

“Do not assume to make me grovel,” I warned him, but his teasing was not malicious. It was a schoolboy’s teasing, a child prince to his little sister. It warmed a little. “With me.”

_ I do not come to anyone’s bed . _

This stirred some interest in me. “Hermes?”

_ I please him in other ways. He likes to be surprised . _

With that, I no longer questioned the nature of their relation, how it was that they pushed and pulled and never repelled. Theirs was a match that the Fates revelled in creating, insufferable though they were, unlike mine with Hermes which was borne of convenience. 

Yet still I pressed on, now that we were speaking of it, before the bud could be nipped and wither. “In what ways?”

Aconitus’ eyes were unreadable, like Daedalus’ labyrinth. They said, Would you like to see?

“Show me.”

He rose from his seat, then leaned across the table that cut across us. His hand, earthy as teak, reached for me and for a moment I thought he might kiss me. Through his veil, perhaps, or some other mysterious way he was capable of. But all he did was rest his fingers gently about the curve of my jaw, cupping my face. It was all he did, but for once, his eyes were not sharp. I blinked once and he had vanished. The skin where he touched me was aflame.

The next day, he greeted me in my room when I woke. Still in my nightclothes, in a state of undress, he crept over to my bed and sat by me. The blankets held, and I was not exposed bare. In the quiet, amidst chirping and snorting and the yawning of my animals, he pressed two fingers to his lips behind the veil. Then he touched them to my own. His eyes were softened, like they were the day before, and I felt a strange, preternatural love jaunt so sharp in my ribs that its loss pained me the scant moment it disappeared.

_Good morning,_ he bade me. But I knew what he truly meant:  _ goodbye _ .

I did not know why he presumed to leave now, of the year he spent lingering in my abode and following my every path. Perhaps it was the conversation I invoked the night before; perhaps now he wanted to lay with Hermes in whatever method he spoke of yesterday, realised the true loneliness he felt here and wanted to travel once more. I would later learn this was not the truth: no matter the company one would keep, even another who was lonely was better than nothing. Better than the wind, or the sea, and their guiles. At least I had no guiles for him.

“Why,” I whispered. “You have not given me what I asked. You have not told me everything. What is my story? What do they say?”

_ They do not yet say anything _ _,_ he said.  _ Your story is not yet written _ .

“Hermes speaks of me often.”

_ Hermes is god of nonsense and jests. Nothing he says of you carries any substance. You already know all I might tell you . _

In a scant moment I felt many things at once. Grief, to be rid of all my company so succinctly. Rage, for him using me as an audience in his time of boredom and loneliness and to simply abandon me once he figured out an alternative to soothe his own ruffled feathers. Ultimately, with those whetted eyes watching me, I dulled, and he did too.

“You are useless to me,” I said.

_ So I am. Are you surprised? _

I did not answer him. “Then get out, and away. Let me not see you.”

I allowed him to touch me again, this time his fingers to my forehead, but I should not have. The feel of him festered on me throughout the day, printed on my skin, and it was a week until I stopped looking over my shoulder to read the movement of his hands while I worked.

He made a sound before he vanished. It was not the clatter of a chair or the creak of the bed – in his throat, the faintest hum, which meaning I could not decipher. But the sound of it throbbed, rang in my head, clear and sweet and not mortal. He had the voice of a god. In that respect, I was wrong, and he was unlike me.

I was once more let alone.


End file.
